Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the City Council will provide the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) with $323.8 million, its highest-ever yearly appropriation as part of the city’s Fiscal Year 2027 budget.

A new exhibition of Philip Guston’s works shows the artist’s transformation “from abstraction to a cartoonish world of people and things,” says art critic John Yau, and focuses on his wife, poet Musa McKim, as a “principal supporter and source of inspiration.”

My latest for @hyperallergic.com is a new study which found DNA preserved in Paleolithic wall pigments in caves in Spain & Portugal 🎨 Art is an archive! Thanks so much to Dr. @monicamedhist.bsky.social for speaking to me about the present and future of paleogenetics. Thanks for reading!

Hyperallergic spoke with noted scholar Jack Halberstam about transness, architecture, and how we can make a better world by first unmaking it.

Check out our list of residencies, fellowships, grants, and open calls from the Paul & Daisy Soros Foundation, Ucross, AICA International, and more in our monthly list of opportunities for artists, writers, and art workers.

A run of recent exhibitions in New York reclaim cartography as a medium for memory, migration, and resistance, including art by late Venezuelan conceptual artist Claudio Perna, Chicano artist Sandy Rodriguez, and Dominican artist Firelei Báez.

Artist Nancy Shaver’s store Henry, a beloved fixture of the antique world in Hudson, NY, for the past 25 years, is closing in mid-July. Henry is “not just a store but a crucible for Shaver’s art-making,” says Steel Stillman. Here, various friends of the store offer reflections on being there.

Deep in the caves of Spain and Portugal, scientists have discovered evidence of ancient human DNA on cave walls. This novel finding proves that DNA can survive for millennia within the paint applied to rock walls, opening a future pathway to recovering the identities of ancient artists.

Negotiations for the second contract with the Guggenheim Museum in New York City are entering their sixth month, with an emphasis on job security after abrupt layoffs last year. Unionized staff across several departments have voted to authorize a strike if necessary.

The world's tallest Lionel Messi statue was unveiled in the Patagonian town of Cutral Có. Featuring a crotch-level and rather phallic World Cup trophy, the sculpture immediately caused a stir online.

Photographer Arielle Shannon documented the NYC Pride March on Sunday, June 28, joining more than 75,000 marchers and one million spectators celebrating on Stonewall’s 57th anniversary.

A Texas tattoo artist has been sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for moving a box of political pamphlets and zines featuring “anti-government and anti-Trump sentiments,” prompting outrage from First Amendment advocates.

In this edition of A View From the Easel, artist Kathleen MacKenzie discusses her workspace in Upstate New York, where she cherishes the birds and freedom of experimental video art.

Thomas W. Laqueur’s new book “The Dog’s Gaze: A Visual History” offers an “expansive, accessible survey of canine presence” across centuries of Western art, says writer Alisyn Amant. Scholarly yet compassionate, it explores how canine companions break down the emotional boundaries between species.

Feeling out of sorts? These specially designed tarotscopes focus on the arts and creative practice, for each solstice and equinox, to mark the turning of the seasons and to (hopefully) guide the creative community back towards a flow state.

Photographer and activist Misan Harriman said he will step down from his post as chair of London’s Southbank Centre. Harriman’s announcement comes weeks after a series of right-wing tabloids scrutinized his response to the April 29 attack in north London’s Golders Green.

For this year’s Pride Month series, writer Matt Stromberg spoke with artist Colombian-American painter Lari Pittman about his new body of work, the complexity of queerness, and the reprieve of the analog.

In Required Reading this week: Scott Burton’s last sculpture, remembering Lebanese environmental activist Mona Khalil, AI slop in art journalism, NYC’s rollerskating queer icon, and more.

Artist William Kentridge was once gifted pure lapis lazuli watercolor pigment from Afghanistan. While he pondered what to do with this intense blue paint (Kentridge doesn’t use color in his drawings), he began reflecting on the “language” of the studio, which he calls a “safe space for stupidity."

In Art Movements this week: Trump is coming for the Architecture Biennale, Modigliani’s “indecent” nude fetches $63.9M, the National Gallery of Art gets a major contemporary art gift, and more industry news.

For our Pride Month series, writer AX Mina spoke with Richard Tsao, who is best known for his labor-intensive “Flood Room” paintings. He spoke about coming out gradually, his art, and his next phase of life.

For more than two decades, Democratic Congressman Jerry Nadler has led the fight to bring resale royalties to artists in the US. With his retirement, it could all go away, says writer Lauren van Haaften-Schick.

Matthew Campbell’s "The Man Who Stole the Gods: A True Story of War, Obsession, and a Global Art Conspiracy" lays out the entwined histories of the Cambodian genocide and the rapacious hunger of Western collectors for sculptures of Hindu and Buddhist deities. We spoke with the author about his work.

In Memoriam this week, we honor Frayda Feldman, a New York gallerist and Andy Warhol print expert; James Wagner, a tireless art collector; Melodee Strong, a Minneapolis muralist, and others.

“Chicago’s gallery and museum scene is eager to provide fresh work for the Midwestern mind,” says writer Natalie Jenkins. Here are 10 art shows to see in The Windy City this summer.

James Cahill’s book “The Violet Hour” starts as a “promising thriller,” says writer Alex Bowditch, but turns into “what is ultimately an extended character study” of figures in the art world.

For this year’s Pride Month series, we spoke with artist Brenda Goodman, who grew up in Detroit and now lives and works in the Catskill Mountains. Her “curiosity and openness come through both in her choice of materials and her fiercely honest approach to her subjects,” said writer Mala Iqbal.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is bringing soccer fever to the Whitney Museum of American Art. From July 11 through the end of the month, anyone who presents a completed World Cup-inspired art poster will get into the museum for free.

vanessa german, the inaugural participant in the Sam Gilliam Visiting Artist Program at the Speed Art Museum, draws upon the stories of 15 Black girls who attempted to escape from a Louisville detention center in 1913 in her current exhibition "…do you remember when you were the sky?"

According to writer Barbara Pollack, former Art Basel global director Marc Spiegler presented a vision of a Brave New Art World in his NY Times essay that has “little to do with art and those who make it.”

Democratic Socialist Claire Valdez, an artist and New York State Assemblywoman, clinched the Democratic nomination to represent New York’s 7th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives in a landslide victory in the primary.

In a letter published yesterday by the AI Moratorium Coalition, nearly 500 artists, writers, and actors asked Mayor Zohran Mamdani to prohibit the use of AI education technology in public schools, issuing a plea to “protect New York City’s creative future.”

When Pace Gallery announced its downsize, CEO Marc Glimcher framed the decision as a response to a larger industry problem. Later that day, he took personal responsibility for the situation. But the shrinking of Pace’s artist roster has been shrouded in confusion from the start.

WATCH: In a new short documentary from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project, artists and creative workers get candid about AI-generative technology, sharing their fears, ethical qualms, and real-life experiences. Premiering exclusively on Hyperallergic, so don't miss it!

As the US approaches its dubious milestone of 250 years, we could all use an escape — preferably, one filled with art.

Artist Danielle De Jesus captured the pride and celebration after the New York Knicks won the NBA championship title this June—their first in 53 years.

James Wagner, beloved New York art collector, has died at age 85. He and his husband, Barry Hoggard, were collectors and art aficionados well-known within the New York gallery world, having built a collection of over 1,500 works largely acquired from the Brooklyn art scene via their social circles.

Brooklyn’s South Bushwick Community Church is seeking to raise $2 million after a blaze caused devastating damage. The 173-year-old Dutch Reformed church was landmarked by New York City in 1968 for its aesthetic and historical character, including its late Greek Revival architecture.

President Trump’s paint on the floor of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a color he dubbed "American Flag Blue," is turning a barf-green. We rounded up some of the best memes that have come from it.

“Georgia O’Keeffe: The Brightness of Light,” a new documentary directed by Paul Wagner, presents the artist as a “perpetual voyager, generously highlighting her lesser-known work and combating myths about her relationship with Alfred Stieglitz,” says writer Debra Brehmer.

In this edition of A View From the Easel, we hear from artist Ashley Chew, who nurtures community and connection in her studio as an antidote to exclusionary spaces in the art world.

As part of our 2026 Pride Month Series, we spoke with lesbian Métis artist Rosalie Favell. Through autobiographical photography, personal text, and digital collage, Favell extrapolates truths of her ancestry and sexuality and inserts herself where she wants to be — where she knows she belongs.

Required Reading: the Obama Center opens in Chicago, painting with Urdu script, glamour as protest, the woman who popularized astrology, an artist’s ode to pigeons, and more.

Through her new book that examines the history of Black quilters, author Sharbreon Plummer argues that in order to achieve broader appreciation for this artform, “a curiosity around and protection of the lineages, aesthetics, and inner worlds of the Black women who make them.”

In case you missed Art Movements last week: Penske gobbles up Vox Media, and in better news, Frankenthaler Foundation climate grants, Meow Wolf on “The Simpsons,” Schomburg Center acquisitions, and more.

A 2023 documentary on Nellie Mae Rowe, the prolific and intuitive self-taught Black artist, will be free to watch on YouTube next month, courtesy of Black Public Media.

There’s plenty to admire about artist William Morris, from his timeless ornamental wallpaper designs to his late-in-life turn to socialist politics, where he imperfectly but tirelessly fought for workers rights and against British imperialism.

Staff members at the Seattle Art Museum have officially unionized following a landslide National Labor Relations Board election this week. The new union, Seattle Art Museum Workers United, will represent over 130 full- and part-time employees across its three locations.

In Memoriam this week, we honor David Hockney, a painter who made the everyday otherworldly; Hiromitsu Morimoto, a Japanese photographer of the sensuous and surreal; Danny Simmons, an abstract expressionist and champion of black artists, and others.

Six heritage preservation groups in Washington, DC, are suing the Trump administration over its plans to create a sculpture garden devoted to American “exceptionalism” on public land along the Potomac River.